Marcus Eek Extra Real
16.4-16.5.2010
Gallery Kalhama&Piippo has the pleasure to open the second solo show at the gallery by Marcus Eek, a Swedish artists living in Berlin. In his new paintings Eek has again taken his strong painterly and colourful body of work to a new level. Alongside with the exhibition “Extra Real” Kalhama&Piippo and Roger Björkholmen Galleri will publish a book showcasing Eek’s body of work from the last years. Curator, artist Michael Petry has contributed with an article.
In Marcus Eek’s works a viewer can equally find the recent history of modern abstract painting and the application of paint, writes Petry in his article “Story Time”*. The act of painting can be seen in Eek’s way of using paint and its painterliness in creating an image and a form. Colour has also got a central place as a material in Eek’s work. Petry describes Eeks paintings in the following way: “Eek does not often use lines to draw an image, he uses paint and its painterliness. The paint floats and flows and shifts and does not seem to settle on the canvas. […] He draws with colour, with the paint itself. He is not a draftsman, which is not to say he does not know how to draw.” Eek’s paintings can also be seen as buds of stories which invite the viewer to finish the tales and get lost in the artist’s rich imagery.
Marcus Eek (b.1968) is a Swedish artist living and working in Berlin. Eek graduated from the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1997. He has had numerous solo shows in Sweden and since his graduation he has participated in group shows in Scandinavia and Europe. His solo shows in 2008 at Gallery Kalhama&Piippo and Roger Björkholmen in Stockholm were both very successful.
*Michael Petry: Story Time, Marcus Eek / Paintings, Helsinki 2010. ISBN 978-952-67020-4-9.
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary